


daylight seems to want you just as much as i want you

by la_victorienne



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M, always-a-girl!Arthur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-26
Updated: 2010-09-26
Packaged: 2018-10-15 10:45:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10555016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/la_victorienne/pseuds/la_victorienne
Summary: In all the years he's known her, he's never made her smile.





	

When he's lucky, she stays.

Sitting at the hotel desk, scribbling into her little leather journal, shoulders hunched under the straps of her slip. She never slept much, not even when this was easy, not even when loving her didn't come with an expiration date. They were so _young_ then, he remembers, young and untested, kids thrown together by useless governments. Even in Afghanistan she had kept the light on in their tent late into the night, the jacket and trousers of her BCUs over the chair, just her army-issue t-shirt and her underwear. Now her sleepless nights are a great deal more elegant, as if erasing the memories of that desert one at a time.

Even then he used to watch her, rolling over in their hastily pushed-together cots to squint against the halo of light. When she stays, now, it is just the same, and he can pretend the clock winds backwards, can pretend to turn back time even as she presses forward. Her hair pinned up, tendrils falling loose, curling softly at the ends. He knows it's serious when she puts on her glasses, thick-rimmed things that sit on the bridge of her woefully unfreckled nose. Even worse is when the glasses are pushed up on the top of her head, holding back the neatly trimmed fringe.

There are a thousand nuances to her insomnia, and he knows them all. The twitches, the shifts, the positions of her legs in the chair. He always did have a good memory.

And he loves it, these nights of stealthy watching, even though it is difficult, even though so often she leaves anyway. He loves it because it is the part of him he can reach, the part of her that cannot be hidden, that cannot be masked. They have been so many things to one another—lovers, enemies, colleagues, maybe even friends, the once, before they knew each others' secrets—but this, this has always been the same. Her, working inside her head, lamp pulled low so as not to disturb him; him, the sheet around his waist, pretending he doesn't know she knows he's watching. This, yes. This is the part he loves. Because these are the moments she takes as safe. And her safety has always belonged to him.

Tonight the glasses are on, but not on top of her head, which he's taking as a good sign. He stirs, rustling the sheets, and she turns, looking over her shoulder. She doesn't smile—doesn't have to, never did, because the look in her eyes was always enough—and he opens his arms, lifting the sheet for her to come in.

"Oh, very well," she mutters, rolling her eyes and shutting off the lamp, padding over to settle her knees between his legs. He smiles into the curve of her neck, bites a kiss there because he can. "I was working, you know," she tells him matter-of-factly, which he's sure she was, possibly calculating pros and cons of a job, possibly listing the reasons she would never sleep with him again. She is always working.

"I do know," he whispers into the skin beneath his mouth. "I know because I know you, darling. I know you," he whispers, soft and low, and this is the only time he can touch her this way, the only time he can be her lover. "I know you," he murmurs, pressing into her skin the warmth and the certainty. "I know the way your face looks when you sleep, I know the way you swallow your laughter, the taste of the back of your knee. I know you, I know you, I _know_ you," he whispers, hands sliding under the lace and silk, fingers finding the places she keeps secret from everyone else, mouth teasing relentlessly at the bend of her jaw. And she arches into him, her breath harsh in his ear, strained with the taste of desire she has fought for as long as he's known her, the kind of wanting wholly unbecoming of a soldier.

And that's what he wants, what he's always wanted, to strip her armour form within her, to lay her bare and make her believe in the things she told herself weren't possible. He wants to breathe the whimsy into her, be the place where nothing is forbidden, where everything is true. Where his body over hers is the shelter from the storm of her lives, the envelope of his arms not a cage but a throne.

"I know you, Diana," he says finally, her body bucking and clenching around him, the silk of her slip rucked up around her waist, her knees pressed into his torso. And the lights are off but the window is open and the moonlight is shining in, and her hair is dark on the white pillow and her eyes are bright and she _does_ smile then, smiles up at him and doesn't say a thing, and he can see the moonlight in her hair and on her skin and he loves it, loves her and can never tell her and he bites into her shoulder when he comes, muffling the burbling words.

"Diana," she asks of him, afterward, when he's breathing slowly and her mind has started to wander again.

"Don't sound so surprised," he mumbles, fingers tracing the inside of her wrist. "It's who you are, innit."

She hums prettily, and something sings the same pitch within him, that this is a night of firsts, of smiles, of songs. "No-one has ever called me that before, you know."

"Yes," he replies, and tightens his arms around her. "I know."


End file.
